Philosophy (Witt) and Communications (Lillie)

I was able to follow Aristotle’s ideas until I came to the idea of the First Mover. I thought of Aristotle as a fairly scientific man prior to reading this and didn’t think he would concern himself with the idea of Gods.

The reading says, “As we have seen, God moves the universe as Final Cause, as being the object of desire…He moves by inspiring love and desire…” Aristotle’s arguments that i read previously seemed fairly scientific and backed up with real knowledge, but here I feel that he moves too far toward religious ideas with the idea of a First Mover. The reading confused me when it said that Aristotle’s God could be said to be a personal one, but then said that Aristotle didn’t think there could be a relationship with God. This seemed extremely contradictory to me and I don’t feel that it was explained well enough. However, I think that the idea of God as distant and removed is intriguing. I feel like whenever people talk about God, they talk about God as personal and close and a being that humans can have a relationship with. I’m very interested in the idea of a God that exists but isn’t able to relate with humans.

I was overall confused and intrigued by this reading. I don’t understand Aristotle’s view of Gods enough and would like to read more about it. I like the idea of a removed deity and would like to explore that idea more.